College Websites

We build sectorwide data and extract reporting, mostly best practice, to identify what to fix and what to emulate. 

Digital Operations Group supports College marketing teams to increase student recruitment and retention. We do this by providing sectorwide data and presenting best practice offered on any of the 450 tertiary education websites we review.

We have over 800 subscribers to our monthly newsletter and have been publishing sectorwide reports since November 2016. Originally the research was carried out as a programme to develop an understanding of the sector's offer and to better development the Havering College of Further & Higher Education website. Later, when looking at the level of development demonstrated across the sector, and taking into consideration the broade remit to provide vocational education, there was an obvious need for dissemination of data amongst the sector's digital practitioners and managers.

Us

We are a small team of technical researchers based in Hackney, with one full-time employee and a string of freelancers. We have undertaken research projects in other sectors in including the social housing sector, international diplomatic sector, and local government sector. Despite our varied backgrounds, our focussed interest has been in the development of the tertiary education sector because of its critical role in developing the digital skills of the entire country.

History

Digital Operations Group is a continuation of a three year programme begun as part of a research project back in 2013 at Birkbeck College. It started as part of the curriculum content of a community development project that taught adults of all abilities, traditions and levels of education, to build websites using the open source Joomla website CMS. It was reinitiated in 2016 as the Critical Friend website with a new focus specifically of Further Education, Sixth Form and Adult Education Colleges (FE/6F/AE). With monthly comparative studies of the Alexa traffic ranking of 450 websites, regular reviews of technical and content issues such as Apprenticeships, Staff Recruitment and Alumni Offers/Fundraising.

Record

Starting in November 2016 with a monthly comparative review of all Colleges' Alexa traffic rankings, this has been a consistent review of performance between College websites and against all websites in the UK and around the world. The snapshot data is recorded on the first of each month and ordered according to performance in the UK. The ranking globally is also captured and the number of inbound links identified by Alexa is also captured. The method Alexa uses is constant but data is more accurate the greater the traffic and is helped by registering with them for the short trial membership.

Website Traffic Data is organised into three tables. Which is simply because the volume of data - 450x12x5 (27,000 cells of data per year) - is very difficult to present and rather hard to view.

► Current Alexa Rankings in Order

The table shows the current and previous 5 months' Sectorwide Traffic Order, UK Traffic Rank, and Direction of Change from the previous month's Traffic Order.

► Past Alexa Traffic Rankings

Each table shows 3 months of Sectorwide Traffic Order, UK Traffic Rank, International Traffic Rank, and Inbound Links.

► Past Traffic Order

Each table shows 12 months of Sectorwide Traffic Order and Direction of Change from the previous month's Traffic Order.

About six months into this a simple refresh project was proposed for the affiliated organisations listed in the footer of the Havering College of Further & Higher Education website and this because the first comprehensive review of the footers of all College Website. What followed an appreciation of the time requirement for undertaking sectorwide reviews, was a series of reviews of technical and content standards that are generally taken for granted by Higher Education (HE) Colleges and Universities but for FE/6F/AE Colleges are generally beyond their operational capability or training:

► Basic Operational Awareness, 9 December 2017

Are websites run to a basic minimum standard? Is there any operational appreciation or management?

► People People People, 24 November 2017

It seems obvious with the etymology of the word College (see below) that all College websites would prominently feature Board Members, Senior Leaders, Faculty Members, Public Facing Staff, and Elected Student Union/Association Representatives. Should Colleges present their vastly experienced and knowledgeable people to current and potential students, clients, benefactors, and stakeholders?

Late 14c. "organised association of persons invested with certain powers and rights or engaged in some common duty or pursuit," especially "body of scholars and students within an endowed institution of learning," also "resident body of ecclesiastics supported by an endowment," from Old French college"collegiate body" (14c.) and directly from Latin collegium "community, society, guild," literally "association of collegae".

What has followed has been a series of reports on a similar theme of technical operations and content development. Some reports mix both the technical with the content and many look to third party websites, the digital outposts, to report individual College and sectorwide performance standards:

Feedback

The biggest response by by people running Colleges and managing College websites has been to use reports for their own continuing professional development programmes and to provide inspiration for their own website development projects. Next has been to reach out for guidance and recommendations for contract developers and integrated systems such as live chat. From South Devon, Belfast, East Kent and Edinburgh direct feedback has been 99.8% positive. Two people have been unhappy about unflattering data and one person complained about copyright infringement, and was introduced to Section 30 of the 1988 Copyright, Designs & Patents Act.

Conclusions

The two important takeaways from these mapping exercises of tertiary education sector websites are positive and negative. The negative is the low level of development from base levels there has been and therefore the effectiveness of presenting data in tables as a prompt of even low/no cost, quick and simple improvements. The positive is that this is not universally true and that many Colleges are wholeheartedly using the data to initiate work-streams, to facilitate staff continuing professional development (CPD), and to populate formal digital skills curricula.

Consistent best website traffic performance is a great indicator of which College has the best strategy and is doing the best marketing and website operations. Outlier websites with unique best practices, where all other metrics are average, are incredible useful but can only be identified and lauded by comprehensive reviews. Imagination, initiative and ambition are found right across the sector. From micro Adult Education Colleges to grand College Groups, there are talented people, at all levels from Chief Executive to Apprentice that are developing new practices and are also open to learning and adopting new practices from wherever they present themselves.

Our hope and the purpose of this site is to make new practices available to every College leader and especially to every practitioner.

Jed Keenan  

Jed has been an associate lecturer and teacher of adults of all abilities and traditions for over 6 years. He is a Digital Skills Specialist at Capel Manor College and before this has worked for Havering College of Further & Higher Education.

Before taking up the post at Havering College Jed worked in television production, post production and transmission for 20 years and then switching careers by studying community development and public policy for 4 years at Birkbeck College. At Birkbeck he was elected the Birkbeck Students' Union Sabbatical Education Officer and practised by volunteering to teach website hosting, building, content production, audience building and performance monitoring to about 4,000 adults of all ages, all traditions and all abilities from around the world.

Jed's favourite digital operations books are:
♥ Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think!
♥ Ahava Leibtag's The Digital Crown
♥ Nathalie Nahai's Webs of Influence

020 8528 3135 | 079 5096 3069
info@collegewebsites.ac.uk

Hackney Picture House
270 Mare Street, London E8 1HE

Live Data Studio Reports

There are four live dashboards demonstrating some of the capability of Data Studio to present the test data and general effectiveness of website marketing and operations: